Privacy Policy

Who we are

Our website address is: https://blog.homemac.com. This website is a blog under the management of Home Mortgage Alliance Corporation (HMAC).

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

We use Disqus Comments widget on our website for you to be able to comment at our webpages using Disqus commenting system. Disqus may collect information about you when you register for and use the Service. Such information may include “Personally Identifiable Information” which means information that identifies you as an individual, such information may include, but is not limited to, your name, email address, telephone number, username or account ID, and “Non-Personally Identifiable Information” which means information that does not identify you as an individual. Non-Personally Identifiable Information may include, but is not limited to, information about your browser, your IP address, device ID, what pages you visit on our Partner Sites, which website you came from, what advertisements you clicked on, whether on our Partner Websites, the Service or other third party websites, and other information about your online activity that does not identify you as an individual, in accordance with their data privacy policy: https://help.disqus.com/terms-and-policies/disqus-privacy-policy

We embed Facebook Comments plugin to allow you to leave comment at our website using your Facebook account. This plugin may collect your IP address, your web browser User Agent, store and retrieve cookies on your browser, embed additional tracking, and monitor your interaction with the commenting interface, including correlating your Facebook account with whatever action you take within the interface (such as “liking” someone’s comment, replying to other comments), if you are logged into Facebook. For more information about how this data may be used, please see Facebook’s data privacy policy: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

We collect your public profile data only from your consent that you grant before initiating Social Login, from the social network used to login at our website. This data includes your first name, last name, email address, link to your social media profile, unique identifier, link to social profile avatar. This data is used to create your user profile at our website. You can revoke this consent at any time by sending us an email.

Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies and to delete cookies. The methods for doing so vary from browser to browser, and from version to version. You can however obtain up-to-date information about blocking and deleting cookies via these links:

Blocking all cookies will have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites.

If you block cookies, you will not be able to use all the features on our website.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics to track social shares made at our website. Google automatically collect and store certain information in their server logs which includes device event information such as crashes, system activity, hardware settings, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and referral URL, cookies that may uniquely identify your browser or your Google Account, in accordance with their data privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy

How we process your data

We may process data about your use of our website and services (“usage data”). The usage data may include your IP address, geographical location, browser type and version, operating system, referral source, length of visit, page views and website navigation paths, as well as information about the timing, frequency, and pattern of your service use. The source of the usage data is Google Analytics and internal web analytics.. This usage data may be processed for the purposes of analyzing the use of the website and services. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interests, namely monitoring and improving our website and services.

We may process [information that you provide to us for the purpose of subscribing to our email notifications and/or newsletters (“notification data”). The notification data may be processed [for the purposes of sending you the relevant notifications and/or newsletters. The legal basis for this processing is the performance of a contract between you and us and/or taking steps, at your request, to enter into such a contract.

We may process [information contained in or relating to any communication that you send to us] (“correspondence data”). The correspondence data may include the communication content and metadata associated with the communication. Our website will generate the metadata associated with communications made using the website contact forms. The correspondence data may be processed for the purposes of communicating with you and record-keeping. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interests, namely the proper administration of our website and business and communications with users.

Who we share your data with

We share your data with company officers and affiliates in order to improve our services and the website.

We may disclose your personal data to any member of our group of companies (this means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company , nd all its subsidiaries) insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes, and on the legal bases, set out in this policy.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Contact information

This website is owned and operated by Home Mortgage Alliance Corporation (HMAC).

We are registered in the United States under the following:

NMLS License # 1165808

Bureau of Real Estate: BRE License Number – 01526821

Department Of Business Oversight: DBO License Number – 603L284

Our registered office and principal place of business is at 4 Hutton Centre Dr., Ste. 500, Santa Ana, CA 92707.

You can contact us:

by post, to [the postal address given above;

by using our website contact form;

by telephone at 800-900-7040; or
by email, using info@HomeMac.com

Additional information

Plugin: Heteor Social Comments

We embed a Facebook widget to allow you to see number of likes/shares/recommends and “like/share/recommend” our webpages. This widget may collect your IP address, your web browser User Agent, store and retrieve cookies on your browser, embed additional tracking, and monitor your interaction with the widget, including correlating your Facebook account with whatever action you take within the widget (such as “liking/sharing/recommending” our webpage), if you are logged in to Facebook. For more information about how this data may be used, please see Facebook’s data privacy policy: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update

Do your plugins track any data?
We do not track any user data via our plugins. But if our plugin depends on any third party service, they might track user data. This can happen in following two ways:

1. Embedded Widgets

Some of our plugins have features to integrate embedded widgets as is, from third party services (like Facebook Like, Facebook Recommend, Twitter Tweet official buttons). It is very likely that these widgets will become GDPR compliant before May 25th. Apart from this, you can include relevant text in the privacy policy of your website that we have mentioned below.

2. Third-party APIs/Connections

Our plugins send request to third party APIs via website-visitor’s web browser to fetch information (like social shares, social comment count). This request made by web browser may include IP address, which can then be seen by the third-party that it’s being requested from. This API request doesn’t include any personal data of the website user other than the IP address. To make your users aware of this, you can include relevant snippets in your website’s privacy policy.

Where is the data collected by your plugins stored?
We do not store any data fetched by our plugins on our servers, neither we share that data with any third party. Our plugins run absolutely on your website and store the data in the database of your website.

Do your plugins load any external scripts?
As mentioned before, our plugins run absolutely from your website and hence load the scripts too from your website with exception of third-party embedded widgets (like Facebook Like/Recommend official button, Twitter tweet official button, Facebook Comments) which require our plugin to load scripts from the servers of relevant service. You can include relevant snippets in the Privacy Policy of your website stating how these services handle privacy of your users.